UK Direct Entry Midwife to Canada

Hi, I am new to this discussion board so apologies if I am posting in the wrong place.

I am a UK trained direct entry midwife with 2 years clinical experience in an obstetric hospital. I have experience in postnatal care, labour and delivery, antenatal care and neonatal care. I am hoping to emigrate and work in a hospital in Calgary.

Can anyone tell me if I can work as a perinatal nurse / obstetric nurse / neonatal nurse in Calgary with my qualification. I solely hold a midwife qualification, I am not a trained nurse.

If not, does anyone know what training I will have to undertake and will my past experience count towards anything?

Suggest you check out the College of RN for AB and see what they require however I suspect you will need to be a RN as Canada is general trained and then you move to the specialized areas. Saying that we are seeing an increase in midwives but not sure what requirements are.

College of RN is to Canada what NMC is to the UK

Jan 15, '13

Thanks for your advice, it's much appreciated. I'll check out the websites you gave me.

Jan 15, '13

There are midwives and then there are midwives.

Hospital based midwives are RNs or NPs who have specialzed post grad education.

Then there are lay midwives who have a bit of a reputation for being granola crunching sandal wearers, that believe anything other than a natural homebirth is an abomination. There have been some pretty bad press on homebirth midwives in the last decade here in Alberta. There is a birth centre in Calgary but I'm pretty sure is an all RN/NP staff who operate it.

I'm pretty certain that a health authority wouldn't hire you without RN credentials.